Champion Profile: Jeanne Smart Leads Perinatal Nurse Home Visitation Program

Champion Profile:  features individuals who exemplify First 5 LA's tagline, "Champions for Our Children."

Jeanne Smart is a registered nurse who is responsible for perinatal nurse home visitation program in the LA County Public Health Department's Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health area.

She has worked as a community-based public health nurse and as a liaison to UCLA- Project TEAMS, a multidisciplinary training course for social workers, nurses, drug counselors and foster parents that focused on drug exposed infants and their family systems.
  
She has been a public health nursing instructor at  Cal State LA and Cal State Long Beach, and is founding director of the Public Health Nursing Program at the LA County Department of Children and Family Services.

Smart earned her BA in nursing at Cal State Long Beach and her MA in nursing from Cal State Dominguez Hills.
           
Which book has most influenced your life?
Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick.

Which historical figure do you most admire?
Florence Nightingale, who, in the 1850s, changed the entire face of nursing (a profession that had been done primarily by prostitutes) to one that has helps millions towards healing and wellness.

What is your favorite way to spend time with an important child in your life?
I love to listen to what children have to say.

What is your idea of a perfect world?
Where there is no hate, no crime, and certainly no abuse of children.

What is the greatest challenge faced by LA County the children and families?
Poverty.

Which living person do you most admire?
Father Greg Boyle, who works the streets of East Los Angeles to stop gang violence.

Who was your favorite teacher?
Mr. Fox, my high school botany teacher, who convinced me to attend college and not listen to the counselor who advised me otherwise. 
 
What is your motto?
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."--Mahatma Gandhi